Due to the growing public awareness of the importance of avoiding excess fat while increasing the consumption of fiber and carbohydrates, fresh fruit is often regarded as the ideal healthful snack. Unfortunately, fresh whole fruit is often avoided in favor of less healthful snack foods because of the inconvenience and mess associated with eating fruit. Instead, people often eat whole fruit such as apples at home by slicing the apple into segments that are convenient and neat to handle and consume. Often people eat fruit such as apples together with complementary foods such as peanut butter, cheese, fudge, popcorn or chocolates.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,418,139 to Craig discloses a method for packaging a piece of segmented fresh fruit, such as an orange or other fruit, in a more convenient form for snacking. The orange is peeled, broken into segments and cleaned. The segments are then reassembled and placed in an fruit-shaped plastic package that includes a tear strip for opening. While the container disclosed is suitable for oranges and is suggested for use with other fruits such as apples, no method is provided for preventing deterioration of the fruit due to introduced microbes and air, which would be present within the cored center and between the segments of the fruit. Further, no accommodation is made for conveniently serving a complementary food with the package orange.
Other methods have been developed for preserving cut fruits to prevent their spoilage until consumption. U.S. Pat. No. 4,883,674 to Fan discloses a method for preserving cut fruit wherein the fruit is treated with a chlorine solution to reduce microbes, sliced, treated with sulfides to reduce enzyme activity, and packaged in a controlled atmosphere within a container including a gas permeable portion. U.S. Pat. No. 4,895,729 to Powrie et al. discloses preserving cut fruit in a controlled atmosphere within a gas impermeable container. The containerized fruit is cold shocked prior to refrigerated storage to further prevent deterioration. U.S. Pat. No. 4,622,229 to Toshitsugu discloses a process for inhibiting ripening of whole apples, wherein the apples are placed together with an ethylene absorbent and a deoxidant in a semi-air permeable bag.
While such methods are suitable for preventing deterioration of fruits, they do not address the packaging and preserving of a sliced cored fruit together with an accompanying food for convenient consumption.